As I mentioned in my previous post, I felt the need to go on a course. I have a lovely DSLR camera but I was using it on auto - which at best was embarrassing and at worst a complete waste of a really nice camera! As a birthday present I went on a one day course last month and now the days of auto are no more!

I went on a full day Intensive DSLR Photography Course with DSLR Photography Courses based at Wimbledon Art Studios in South London. Chosen mainly for the fact that with Sunday morning traffic, it's only 20 minutes away from me, but it turned out to be really good and I'm hopeful that Mr M might like to buy me another course next year!

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An assumption was made that we were all able to take reasonable images on auto but had no idea what we were doing in manual (which was pretty accurate for most of us!). After a couple of hours of theory we all headed out to the park (on what turned out to be a fairly hot day) to practice depth of field with each other and some little plastic muscle men.

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We then went back into the studio to analyse our images and play around with contrast and low light.

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Before heading back out into the sunshine to learn about shutter speed and bursting water balloons (so it was a good job it was hot!).

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We went back and analysed one another's images again - did a little more theory, and then had great fun creating images with pinpoints of light in a darkened room, before collapsing in a heap at the end of the day.

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So I've learnt a lot more about what my camera can do (and I've been practicing - some recent images below) and I'll be applying what I've learnt the next time I take new product photographs (although they do run a product photography course - someone hold me back!).